If you are hearing an overtone at 16 Hz, then you are not hearing 16 Hz, you are hearing 32, 64, or any other combination of 16(since we picked 16 Hz as our frequency). An Overtone is a natural resonance in the vibrating structure and is nearly completely unavoidable. However, just because an overtone is a natural phenomena of any vibrating structure, it once again has nothing to do with you being able to hear anything below 18 Hz. And while an overtone may not be part of the track, it has nothing to do with anyone being able to "think" they hear 16 Hz. No human can hear a true generated 16 Hz, no exceptions. An overtone is NOT part of a true 16 Hz frequency tone, I am just explaining to you what is going on.
A 16 Hz tone is none of the following:
--Port noise
--Overtone
--Other objects vibrating near by
It is correct to say you cannot hear low frequencies, or more specifically somewhere around and below 18 Hz. There are plenty of articles about this exact topic. Check out some sites like "Sound and Vision" or "Home Theater". I learned much of this from them, and none of this is my own personal interpretation.
Thought I would add:
An overtone coming from a speaker driver, is a quality of that specific driver. Even when you play a perfectly generated tone of say 16 Hz, you will get overtones. This does not mean you can magically hear the 16 Hz, it means that your subwoofer is very poor at generating that low frequency. It is an unfortunate thing to live with, and it is just something we try to hinder by use of better speaker technology. Nothing to fret about, very few subwoofers can play that low anyways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics
"Tones between 4 and 16 Hz can be perceived via the body's sense of touch."
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